Taylor, W.
Annals of St.Mary Overy ; an historical and descriptive account of St.Saviour’s church and parish.
London, “published for the author by Messrs Nichols & Son” 1833.
Full Description
4to. (8) + 143 + (1)pp, 20 engr plates (one partly hand-coloured). Contemporary full diced black calf, neatly rebacked.
A book on the future Southwark Cathedral by the local artist and engraver William Taylor, which provides the most nearly contemporary record of restoration work done to the church in the 1820s and 1830s by the architects George Gwilt (1773-1856) and Robert Wallace (c.1790-1874), and which complements an earlier nineteenth-century book on the cathedral by W.G. Moss. Taylor also describes recent discoveries of Roman remains in Southwark, the monuments in the church, and so on, making his factual narrative more acceptable to his readers by casting much of it as a conversation between him and a genial old antiquary. The plates were engraved by the author himself, partly from his own drawings. The work was originally issued in parts, and the present copy retains the early printed preface leaf additional to the signature collation, not present in a previous copy of this title which we have catalogued, which was probably issued with the first part but later cancelled. BAL Cat 3252.